Of all the various conservative voices arguing on behalf of telecom immunity, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has been the least coherent. Today, the far-right editors take on the 31 Democratic senators who voted for Chris Dodd’s rule-of-law amendment, specifically targeting Barack Obama.
“We lost every single battle we had on this bill,” conceded Chris Dodd, which ought to tell the Connecticut Senator something about the logic of what he was proposing. His own amendment — to deny immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 — didn’t even get a third of the Senate. It lost 67-31, though notably among the 31 was possible Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. (Hillary Clinton was absent, while John McCain voted in favor.)
It says something about his national security world view, or his callowness, that Mr. Obama would vote to punish private companies that even the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said had “acted in good faith.” Had Senator Obama prevailed, a President Obama might well have been told “no way” when he asked private Americans to help his Administration fight terrorists. Mr. Obama also voted against the overall bill, putting him in MoveOn.org territory.
The defeat of these antiwar amendments means the legislation now moves to the House in a strong position. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in the Dodd-Obama camp, but 21 Blue Dog Democrats have sent her a letter saying they are happy with the Senate bill. She may try to pass the restrictions that failed in the Senate, and Republicans should tell her to make their day. This is a fight Senator McCain should want to have right up through Election Day, with Democrats having to explain why they want to hamstring the best weapon — real-time surveillance — we have against al Qaeda.
(bangs head against desk)
This isn’t about the Obama-Clinton match-up — as far as I can tell, Clinton, despite not voting yesterday, agreed with Obama’s position on the issue — this is about a far-right editorial board smearing Dems for doing the right thing.
First, the Journal tries to get in a cheap shot at Dodd, suggesting his efforts weren’t “logical” because they lacked majority support in the Senate. It’s an interesting argument — has the WSJ editorial board ever advocated a position that fell short of a majority? Did they assume, at the time, that this position must lack merit?
Second, the WSJ simply doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it argues that the telecoms would refuse to cooperate with a President Obama on counter-terrorism efforts unless the telecoms were awarded amnesty from law-breaking. The Journal is fundamentally confused about the nature of the debate.
As Matt Browner Hamlin concluded:
Getting to the actual hypothetical levied in this bumbling attack by the WSJ, I’d hope telecoms say no if President Obama asks for their help. If he makes the simple step of getting a warrant, I’d certainly expect the telecoms to comply. I haven’t heard of a single documented case where the telecoms refused to help the US Government spy on suspected terrorists when a warrant is forthcoming; to do so would surely land them in far greater legal hot water than their current plight.
Matt also raises a good point about the WSJ labeling these efforts “antiwar.”
This legislation had nothing to do with the war. It didn’t have anything to do with Iraq – it didn’t even have anything to do with Afghanistan. It’s a broad package of laws governing how the US government can monitor Americans. Pretending otherwise goes beyond the realm of Republican framing…. It’s lunacy, derived from their need to lie about what is going on in order to present a favorable case for their positions.
The fact that the Wall Street Journal editorial page, along with the White House and congressional Republicans, couldn’t win this debate without obvious and demonstrable lies tells us a little something about the quality of their argument.